The rot is too deep

Politics is not going to save America. For decades a slow rot has crept over the fabric of this nation. It infested the churches, the schools, the sciences, the high and low arts, the social clubs, sports and the family. People shrugged at and were repulsed by the most grotesque of the feminists and even other hard core feminists thought Andrea Dworkin went too far, but practical feminism (the idea of woman as god)  can be found  everywhere. People were horrified by the open sinfulness that was embraced by the elites but today single mothers by choice are treated like heroines and even praised from the pulpit. Pornographers were once seen as nasty little trolls working in rented rooms on some filthy back street. Today Hugh Hefner is a figure of Americana.

The old lecher is dead and gone to his reward but judging from the commentary you could almost think a philanthropist died.  Some saints could actually smell sin and I imagine that to anyone who had that divine gift, Hefner's stench must have been unbearable. When you think about all the lives he ruined, all the girls and boys gone to Hell because of him and his slimy empire it's just staggering. This week I read comments at a conservative discussion forum where the only men who condemned Hefner were called Puritan, accused of  being unattractive to women and mocked. One man said Hefner wasn't a pornographer but "just" printed "tasteful" nudes. Another listed all the infamous women Hefner had liaisons with and said he lived the American dream.  Many of the men on this particular site are fathers and grandfathers. If they are the conservatives then you can easily see how deep the corruption has gone.

Playboy was a dominant force in normal people's lives. Once when I was a child I visited Atlantic City. While skipping down the boardwalk and chewing on taffy, my classmates and I saw a couple of Playboy Bunnies standing near the Playboy club door in broad daylight. We, little Catholic girls got excited and waved to the Bunnies as if they were movie stars. The adults with us chuckled. My mother was not amused and I didn't set foot in Atlantic City again until I was an adult. A Catholic woman told me that her parents had once had a Playboy club membership because it was a cool spot and at the time, it was the only place in London, where an American could get a good steak. I recall that when I was a teenager the mother of a classmate and neighbor  told my mother how sad she was because she found Playboy in his sock drawer. She consoled herself that this was normal and healthy and thank God he wasn't going to be gay. My mother thought that the idea that a boy either had to be eager to look at smut or be suspected of homosexuality was extreme but she apparently held held the minority view. The magazine only lost its place because it couldn't compete with the Internet and is not nasty enough for the much of the public's taste

The rot is deep and everywhere. The mainstream pornography that Hefner unleashed  got to the point where the in the 70s, the "sophisticated" set told us that so called "artistic" child pornography was okay and except for people like Jerry Falwell and a few good concerned Baptist ladies almost nobody spoke up. Movies like Pretty Baby had a 12 year old Brooke Shields as a sex symbol. Jody Foster was 12, when she played a prostitute in Taxi Driver. Linda Purl was an adult but played a teenager in the very popular TV movie,  Little Ladies of the Night.  Roman Polanski raped a 13 year old and got away with it. In general people didn't boycott his movies. Playboy for its part, regularly showed pinups naked but with carefully selected  childlike attire like ribbons or  teddy bears and it had cartoons with little girls in them. Those articles, short stories and cartoons that people claimed they read the magazine for were full of molestation and incest innuendo. The  magnificent Judith Reisman  pointed this out and fought a heroic and often lonely battle against Hefner's empire.

The seediness was so intense that some form of self preservation made people unconsciously react and things quieted down a bit  in the 80s.  "Soft core" pornography was still mainstream but guys realized that they weren't going to be welcomed at the Rotary club  or the Grange meetings if they openly displayed that stuff in their living rooms anymore. It was window dressing mostly. Serious soul harming damage had already been done to the national zeitgeist. The 90s came and soon people could see gross images on their computer at home and indulge in their solitary vice to their heart's content... and today? Today, as I said before, Hugh Hefner is an icon, fondly looked back upon and his perversion seems almost like quaint compared to the pornography that is readily available. Politics is not going to save us. The rot is too deep. The only hope is a massive turning to Christ.